JMQG inspiration

Here are all of our Jersey MQG entries for the Jersey Eisteddfod needlework section including the group trophy that we won for the second time. It is inspiring to see the work done by members over the previous year displayed in one place. Though pulling together the display by myself almost killed me.

The room was very hot yesterday and three of us sat chatting about scrap management. Sue had taken my system of zip lick bags for each colour a step further and pressed the scraps at one of our meetings. Gisele decided to do the same yesterday evening and payed the results on Instagram.

This morning I did the same whilst starting a new bag for linen scraps and Sweetwater HSTs which I am sure could be made into a quilt. Once pressed the scraps take about a third of the room than before pressing. I need to take this system further and add your Bonnie and Camille scraps which occupy one basket with only a small amount of FQs and yardage.

Pretty little London progress

Today is my first day in London and I am meeting up with friends to go to some craft shops and lunch, before heading to Gatwick airport to go home. I brought along my #100DayProject to work on as it is very portable. I am pleased with the progress I have made in two weeks on this project and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I may even finish this one this month.

Each day I have worked on one element of the picture. Yesterday I finished the clouds and the Sun and progress to working on St Paul's Cathedral in the bottom right hand corner. I have only realised recently that the building in the left-hand corner must be Buckingham Palace.

#100days week 1 check in

It feels like I have abandoned all other projects to work on my Pretty Little London cross stitch this week. 

I finished the tower of the bridge of the left side as well as the Shard and Gherkin. I love the look of the Gherkin building as it has been represented in the pattern.

I tentatively completed the blue border under the tower to see if both sides would meet. Hooray, success. I feel the project is half complete though there are big portions on the left and bottom still to be completed.

And yesterday I completed the second tower along with a customer quilt. A big customer quilt.

Today I need to prep for two workshops I am attending in the UK as well as finish the blue supports to the bridge. I am also focussing on finishing customer quilts so that I can work on my own projects over the next three months. The first project requiring attention is my lion which needs to be quilted.

Sweet tea and green beans

I finished my Bumbling Honeys quilt bee homage to sweet tea and green beans. Hooray.

I long armed quilted some areas using rulers and free motion and then in my their areas I hand quilted circles and cross hatching.

I like the variety of low volume backgrounds that my bee friends used.

#100days

I have recently become aware of the #100days and it got me thinking. I have several UFOs that need a lot of work on them and if I worked on them for 30 minutes a day for 100 days, I should make significant inroads into them. That should also mean that when it is chosen as my UFO to complete for the APQS challenge, I might actually finish them.

My biggest UFO is the Sedona star BOM which has a lot of appliqué to complete. Fortunately this UFO has been kept in one drawer for several years so is at hand and I have kept the thread in one box with a note of the settings for the blanket stitch on my Bernina. I will at some point have to work out how to resolve that I used the wrong fabric for one of the colours so I need to find a suitable replacement  / substitute.

I am away a few times in April so have chosen my Pretty Little London cross stitch to work on too. I have already worked on this for the first few days of the challenge and I can see progress. However with 21 colours in the pattern, I am not being systematic in my stitching. I want to work the first big tower as well as finish the left hand side. I may be more successful though if I worked bottom up. Working just one colour at a time is too boring. A plan needs to be formulated.

Q2 finish along

In some ways my list is getting shorter but I have just added two retreat projects from last weekend's Jersey Modern Quilt Guild rainbow retreat and I am taking two classes with poppyprint in April. Let's see what's still on the to do list.

1. Jan Krentz star from 2010

2. TQS BOM Sedona Star from Jan 2012

3. Lion from 2017, I plan to complete this project in April and I first need to stay stitch the edges, remove the papers and give it a good press before loading it on my long arm.

4. Tula Pink butterfly from October 2017. I need to move a few blocks and then quilt it.

5. Christmas on Gingerbread Lane

6. It's a small world from 2016 2/3 pieced

7. Pretty London

8. Hugs cushion

And I have added:

9. Five impossible things

10. Slalom pouch

I also need to make a jet set sewing station for a retreat gift which is number 11. I have the pattern printed out and a friend has the fabrics I need. First I plan to quilt a piece of the fabric from which I can cut my panels, then I will buy ready made bias binding, I think and prep the project for our Jersey MQG April meeting.

April plans

I am not sure what happened to February and March, but here we are at the beginning of April and the last day of the Easter holiday weekend. Our daughter comes back from university for ten days today, so I am sure we will be busy with appointments.

I almost finished this cross stitch on our Caribbean cruise at the beginning of February and it has sat impatiently waiting to be finished. I completed it on Saturday and immediately pressed it and took it to the framers.

I then sorted out my floss for my last two cross stitch UFOs. I have just one skein to purchase. I then sorted out my drawer of cross stitch equipment and sold the extras on Facebook. That felt good. I am going to work on the pattern called Pretty Little London next.

 

Retreat quilt

I attended the Thread House retreat exactly a year ago. I decided I wanted to put the pieces that I had made in classes together as a retreat QUI LT. I noticed that this year the class samples are being used to make a medallion quilt but I have not gone to the retreat this year.

The blocks from top left to bottom right are as follows:

Appliqué tree was a class with Lynne Goldsworthy

The Just Sew Sue block block is my own design

The improv self-portrait was a class with Jo Avery

On The bottom row the foundation pieced star was a class with Lynne Goldsworthy again

The curved block was from a block of the month in which both Lynne and Karen were designers. So I thought that using up this block along with the final block in the quilt worked well as both Lynne and Karen are owners of the thread house retreat along with Jo.

Finally the appliqué vase of flowers was a class with Jo Avery. I added a button to the centre of several flowers as I was too lazy to appliqué small circles.

I then free machine quoted fee quote on my long arm "machine. And found it in the same fabric as I had used on the reverse of the quote.

This is another UFO finally shed and was my number 12 for the APQ 2018 challenge.

Celebration sampler progress

I have finished my #12 UFO for the January APQS challenge so I have retrieved my Christmas celebration sampler again. I am working on it this morning and have three blocks out of nine to complete. 

One side of the border is still to be stitched too. As you may be able to see from the picture, I am about to run out of the Weeks Dye Works thread in Snowflake. I have just realised that I ordered another skein this morning in icicle and not snowflake. Damn, I hope they see my email when they open again on Monday.

Sterntaler socks

They are finished and need blocking before being entered in our local Eisteddfod in March. I am now waiting for the first pattern of the Curious Handmade sock club to be released on 5 February. I hope some yarn hints come before we go on holiday.

Morning Joe II

This quilt may look familiar. The original which I made three years ago has been for sale in a local high end store for about two years. A member of staff purchased it and wanted a matching sister quilt. It's not a match but it is also from a Bonnie & Camille charm pack,

I was also able to use the same quilting pattern and the quilt will be delivered next week.

Sterntaler socks

When I got my socks out that I had knitted in 2017 for Voolenvine yarns' knitalong to knit 12 pairs of socks in a year, I was very disappointed that I had only knit 11 pairs of socks. Other than the cowl by Curious Handmade I didn't knit much in December. So I have chosen yarn  from Devon Sun yarns and the sterntaler socks by soprano knits which is a free pattern on rivalry and I am ready to go.

I have already got as far as the heel turn. Hopefully I can finish this before the end of the month to participate in the grocery girls' sockalong.

I have signed up for curious handmade's monthly sock pattern so come February I won't have to choose a pattern. I will be away from early February so I hope that the pattern is released early in the month or there is an indication of what yarn will suit the pattern so I can cake up some yarn to pack for my holiday.

Tidying up wadding

I am surprised with myself, but I have managed to keep my sewing table clear this week. It isn't that I haven't been sewing, but having a clear desk every morning means that I have been tidying up every evening. 

I'm putting my works in progress in the top of my IKEA cart.

As wadding is bulky, I thought that tidying that element this week would have the greatest impact on my mess. My roll of wadding is kept permanently in the same room as my long arm and usually my bag of wadding scraps is kept in the 

same room.

I store my scraps in a zippered bag in which new bedding is sold. Small scraps get passed to a friend for stuffing, bigger scraps I use to clean the rails of my machine and large scraps are then easily found for bags or small quilts.

All I had to do was unpick some quilting on scraps to liberate the wadding from the backing and the backing has been added to the pile of fabric to be sorted. I think my IKEA cart needs tidying next.

Christmas Celebration Sampler - January

I planned to finish one extra segment of the sampler in January. I have now completed block T as it had a small section of border.

That brings the number of blocks completed song with their borders to three. Though blocks R and A are almost complete too. I will now work on some other UFOs and put thus project away until February when I plan to complete another block. However we are away for two weeks in February so I may take this prject with me and get a more substantial amount complete. It would be great to finish the fancy border but I imagine that will be almost the last thing finshed on this project.

Stitched sewing organisers

I am valiantly trying to get all of the projects from Aneela Hoey's book completed for the sewalong so I can return to only participating in two sewalongs at any one time. Yesterday I completed the book and tool Folio. This project is due to be completed by 11 February when we will be in the Caribbean. I hope to be able to post the photograph to Instagram during that week as I am sure there'll be free Wi-Fi somewhere during our trip. I think I only now have the covered tape measure to complete to finish this sewalong.

I have enjoyed using my stash of Alison Glass fabrics and although the turquoise zips don't match the chosen fabrics, I like the pop of floor they give.

Next I need to bind a couple of quilts.

Planning for 2018

I was lucky enough to win a copy of the 2018 Quilter's Planner and one of my big plans for 2018 is to tidy my work room. I am going to do it step by step. I am destashing as I come across items that I nolonger  want in my life. Perhaps they were gifts, prizes or rash purchases. I also have a lot of scrapbooking tools that I need to review.

My first task this month was to clear my desk so I am just left with my most used tools. Next I am going tidy my Ikea cart to house my current WIPs in the top and I am not sure what else. I also want to tidy my cutting station and wadding too.

I need to unpick wadding from quilt backing which is an easy and portable project to take to my Wednesday morning quilt group or when I have a spare ten minutes.

Christmas celebration sampler

Having scrapped my first attempt at this pattern in 2017, although my crafting Mojo seemed to leave me in December, I had this sampler permanently by my side. I have made a decent amount of progress, however the amount of white in the border does intimidate me. I have now completed the inner border and all of the letters. Once I have finished the block T, I will put it away and attempt to complete one block per month. Otherwise I will work on the UFO selected by the American patchwork and quilting magazine UFO challenge.

I have already completed two out of the nine blocks including the border adjacent to the block. I find that when I cross stitch with white thread that I am not completely satisfied with the look I achieve so any white sections are always the last to be completed. I am sure that I will get this one finished by Christmas 2018. I still have another Christmas Crosstitch UFO to complete in addition to this one.

2018 plans

I won a copy of the fabulous Quilter's Planner in a #missingmarket giveaway on Instagram. I have set my goals for the year and almost immediately realised one of my goals would be a challenge - to only participate in two sewalongs at a time. Oops, I am already participating in two and the QP BOM starts this month. My plan is to try and complete all of my Sew Stitched projects over the next two weeks. Here is my completed 2 in 1 pouch for next week as it looked easier than this week's project!

And the inside.

Today I need to start the triple pouch.

Stitched sewing organisers

Here is a collage of the nine projects completed from the book by Aneela Hoey in 2017. 

As I am away for two weeks in February I need to get ahead. 

APQ UFO challenge 2018

The challenge has started at http://www.allpeoplequilt.com/how-to-quilt/finishing/2018-ufo-challenge My list is written and is shorter than 2017, in that all of my cross stitch UFOs have also been added to the list and my oldest UFO is from 2010. With a bit of application, I could finish most of them by the end of 2018.

Here's my list with photos where possible. I am going to try and photograph all of them over during December.

1. Jan Krentz star from 2010

2. TQS BOM Sedona Star from Jan 2012

3. Lion from 2017
4. Sweet tea and green beans from 2014. Top is pieced and ready to be quilted.

5. Milky Way quilt from January 2017 - again top is pieced and ready to quilt

6. Tula Pink butterfly from October 2017. I need to move a few blocks and then quilt it.

7. Christmas on Gingerbread Lane

8. Christmas Celebration Sampler. I have restarted this one and I am working on it this month as an advent project

9. It's a small world from 2016 2/3 pieced

10. Pretty London

11 Hugs cushion

12. Retreat quilt from January 2017 - two blocks left to quilt.

Christmas Celebration Sampler

I planned to work on this project for an hour each day in December. I made considerable progress and got to the top border. However the more I stitched, the more I became convinced that the fabric was too see through and despite the hours already invested, it hit the bin a week ago. I ordered the even weave in the colour gingerbread from The Makery. The fabric arrived today and I have made some progress and I love the project.

Not bad progress for a few hours. I hope to have the internal frames and numbers done by next week. Then I can start on the fancy border. I am nervous until I get all of the sides joined up as I worry that I will be half a stitch awry. A great advent project. I doubt that I will finish it this year, but my cross stitch UFOs have reduced over 2017 so progress to a finished project will be satisfying.

First day of advent

I haven't bought an advent calendar for myself this year but I have reused an old calendar to make a yarn advent calendar for myself. I am going to use the yarn to knit another pair of Yule Ball socks, which are my own design.

My advent plans are to do something Christmassy every day, cross stitch on my Christmas Celebration Sampler for an hour and knit on my Yule Ball socks every day.

I had done very little on the sampler before today and I am worried that the aida is a bit transparent. I am going to plod on though and try and get the dividers and letters done this week. Then I will start on one of the backs and its section of frame.